Dispatches

The San Francisco Symphony played my piece Dispatches four times on their first subscription series of the 2015-16 season. This was the culmination of the "New Voices Residency," a partnership of the SFS with Miami's New World Symphony, and the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. It was through this program that I was commissioned twice - for an orchestral work and a chamber work - to be workshopped and premiered in Miami and then given a hefty West Coast premiere in San Francisco.

Writing for a full orchestra - and working with a group of laser-focused professionals like the SFS - is an ongoing journey for me, and in many respects I still feel like a fish out of water. I didn't grow up playing an orchestral instrument, and of course most of the music I listen to currently isn't something you'd hear in an orchestra hall. Part of the reason for writing Dispatches was to grapple with this distance.

There are times when Dispatches calls to mind the nostalgia of a composer like Alfred Schnittke, with his heartbroken invocations of a musical past that is beyond recovery. The difference is that the gap that interests Hearne is stylistic, not chronological — and that he shows it to be bridgeable after all.